"The landscape winking thro' the
heat"—
or to gather this image:—
"He has a solid base of temperament;
But as the water-lily starts and slides
Upon the level in little puffs of wind,
Though anchor'd to the bottom, such
is he;"
or this:—
"Arms on which the standing muscle
sloped,
As slopes a wild brook o'er a little
stone,
Running too vehemently to break
upon it,"—
and many other gems that abound in his poems. He does not cut and cover in a single line, so far as I have observed. Great caution and exact knowledge underlie his most rapid and daring flights. A lady told me that she was once walking with him in the fields, when they came to a spring that bubbled up through shifting sands in a very pretty manner, and Tennyson, in order to see exactly how the spring behaved, got down on his hands and knees and peered a long time into the water. The incident is worth repeating as showing how intently a great poet studies nature.
Walt Whitman says he has been trying for years to find a word that would express or suggest that evening call of the robin. How absorbingly this poet must have studied the moonlight to hit upon this descriptive phrase:—
"The vitreous pour of the full moon
just tinged with blue;"
how long have looked upon the carpenter at his bench to have made this poem:—
"The tongue of his fore-plane whistles
its wild ascending lisp;"